“Flowers are usually shown cut and arranged in vases.  The vases should be of clear, white glass for the best effects.  Rose bowls may be used, too.  Do not put grand collections of all varieties and colours of flowers together.  Suppose the exhibit of a certain person is to be one of asters.  Then put the purple ones together in a vase, the pink ones together in another vase.

“Another mistake of exhibitors is the huddling of products into close quarters.  Give your individual specimens plenty of room.  Let the things stand out as individual.  The entire exhibit is spoiled when it looks messy and huddled up.

“The labelling is often done poorly.  Any little piece of paper is stuck on the vases or under a bunch of vegetables.  The child’s name is written in abominable handwriting.  Write or neatly print a little card.  Put on this the date, name of the exhibitor (or number) and his place of residence, if required.

“These, in brief, show the real educative lines along which one ought to conduct a children’s exhibit.  The aesthetic side enters in largely, and a proper bit of the commercial is here, too.”

Well, this exhibit of the boys’ was pretty good.  Each boy had a set of photographs showing the round of his work.  These had been made into books.  Some of the boys had kept diaries.  The diaries had in them not only an account of experiences, but also the tables worked out with The Chief.  Jack had what he called an improvement section, which gave ways by which he might improve over his present methods of work.  The garden plans drawn to a scale were on the walls.  Myron had brought his set of real garden tools.  The pieces of hand work made by the boys were there, too.

George had made a collection of garden pests, while Philip and Peter had made collections of weed pests.  All the pamphlets from Washington which they had used in their work and those from their own state experiment station were on a little table.

Each boy told briefly the difficulties he had encountered and how he had met them.  After a talk by Jay, Albert spoke of the experiment in inoculation of soil.  Then he and Jay disappeared, and returned with plates, one for each guest, and on each plate were two spoonfuls of beans, one of the inoculated and the other of the uninoculated beans.  The visitors were not told which were which.  Then a vote was taken as to which were the better.  Of course, the inoculated beans won out.

After this, the real refreshments were served.  “I should like to ask,” Dee made bold to say, “where you boys got strawberries to make ice cream of?  Strawberries in October!  You certainly do not expect us to believe you raised them.”

“I did,” said Myron, striking an attitude before her.  “I did in my own little patch.”

“Did you make a few cakes of ice and thus have a cold storage plant?” Dee continued sarcastically.

“Dear me, no!  I’m much more clever than that.  One day, with a few baskets of berries tucked under this noble right arm of mine, I walked to this house.  I knocked at the door.  A man let me in.  He tied an apron about this waist.  We actually canned these same berries which you are now eating as a frozen delicacy.”